first fff in a while! And now i have to know: how many times can i write about obeah before i actually need to research it?
Shaman
He didn’t like to talk about it, but given the nature
of gossip, everyone knew and did the talking for him.
Big time evangelist preacher,
but I hear his brother is a obeah man! Yes! I hear it too! An’ it wasn’t jus’
he, his granny in it too! My tanty was tellin’ me so de other day…
Not to say it wasn’t true. For Raymond, growing up was
as steeped in Granny’s special prayers as it was in entire Sundays spent in
church and revival tents. It had gone on for so long that by the time he was
old enough to think anything of it, he couldn’t imagine anything different.
Raymond didn’t hear much about Randy these days other
than the whispers of the congregation. The last he heard was that he was up in
some shack in San Souci, honing his arts, to paraphrase his grandmother. Randy
had embraced it from the start. Raymond had to have a brush with death before
he did anything about it. It was ten years ago and he and his best friend
Marlon were coming home from a Carnival fete, (the congregation absolutely
loved that part), when a driver drunker than he was sped through an
intersection and ran into their car, passenger-side first. The driver of the
other car had been killed instantly and, as he would find out later, so had
Marlon. Yet, when Raymond awoke in the ICU, Marlon was there with him. And he
stuck around for a while after that, (and would visit whenever he got bored
with whatever otherworldly business he conducted when he wasn’t busy haunting
Raymond).
It was
Marlon who helped him figure out the whole healing touch, and Marlon who
suggested the whole church business. His granny knew of course, and would tut
righteously whenever Raymond mentioned Marlon.
“Spirits not supposed to linger so long,”
she would chide, sucking her teeth and shaking her head, to which Raymond would
respond with a halfhearted shrug. He knew about as much about ghosts now as he
did ten years ago. His forte now lay in balancing the people’s beliefs in the
divine and the extent of his ability.
He
started out about a year after his accident. Between the seminary and the
advice from Granny, Marlon and Randy, Raymond thrived. For the first time in
his life he was actually doing well with something: secondary school was
lackluster at best and life pre-collision was idle, punctuated by whatever
hustle was necessary to fund temporary desires. But the Church made him feel
whole. So his congregation grew. Marlon had the makings of a shrewd businessman
and he wasn’t going to let go to waste just because he was dead, and donations
poured in.
Raymond declined the radio and TV spots and tried to
keep the pills and tonics to a bare minimum. He would cringe when he heard
other evangelists on the radio with their bizarre Frankenstein-esque Yankee-cum-“foreign”
accents rebuking the Devil and lauding their various remedies, (specially
shipped and available for a very affordable $700 package deal). He was already
mixing “devil ting” with scriptures and his morals wouldn’t let him betray the
people further.
Yet Raymond knew that some of the same members of his
congregation that would sit and gossip about his brother would drive up to San
Souci to see Randy with matters they felt weren’t appropriate to bring to the
House of the Lord. Two sides to the same coin; what was obeah to one was
religion to another and whatever Spirit had given him this gift was fed by the
same belief of the people. Obeah man, witch doctor, pastor… Raymond had figured
out a long time ago that it was the same calling, different name. The trance,
the healing… It was all steeped in ritual and parlour tricks, with a kernel of
truth nestled at the centre of it all. Shaman was shaman.
